Monday, April 13, 2009

A look back

This past week saw the return of baseball. As exciting this is for BWP, and especially noted BWP supporter David Wright, the week has been numbed by tragedy. Angels rookie and Maryland native Nick Adenhart and Phillies/NFL Films announcer Harry Kalas lost their lives this week. It's a black week for baseball.

On a lighter note, Comcast offered a free week preview of MLB Extra Iinnings. Not only did this guarantee nearly non stop baseball and decreased attention to school work, it gave me the opportunity to check out regional announcers outside of the O's/Nats MASN sphere. Actually, I couldn't check out those games if I wanted to. They are regionally blacked out here in Blacksburg. The only problem is Blacksburg is not actually in the O's/Nats region. Welcome to Bumfuck, Virginia.

After checking out as many games as I possibly could, I've decided the Houston Astros broadcasters are my favorite in the nation. A game between the Astros and Cubs entered extra innings. The announcers reminisced about an 18 inning game they called between the same 2 teams.Brown: "I hit a raccoon driving home at 3 am from that game....poor little guy...flew to the other side of the road."Deshaies: "That's not as bad as what I did...I few months back I hit a deer in my daughter's van."

The inning ended upon completion of this sentence. I'm still waiting to hear the rest of that story. Go Astros.

The new MLB Network is awesome. If you haven't checked it out, it's basically Baseball Tonight that lasts for hours, and cuts to live feeds of games when something interesting is happening, then provides instant analysis that is actually pretty insightful. I'm glad I have something to distract me from ESPN. I'm sick of hearing about NFL Draft speculation. One of these days Todd McShay is going to slap Mel Kiper, Jr. There will be a tense stare-down for about 5 seconds, then the 2 will start making out passionately. Mark my words. The sexual tension between those two puts any soap opera to shame.